STAMFORD, Conn. (AP) — Family and friends of Jennifer Dulos, who disappeared from her Connecticut home in 2019, offered emotional testimony Friday at the sentencing hearing of her estranged husband’s former girlfriend, who was convicted of helping to plan and cover up her killing.
Michelle Troconis, 49, faces up to 50 years in prison.
Prosecutors say Dulos’ husband, Fotis Dulos, killed her at her home in New Canaan and drove away with her body, which has never been found. He died by suicide in 2020 shortly after being charged with murder. He had denied killing his wife.
Troconis was living with Fotis Dulos when his wife disappeared. Troconis was convicted by a jury in March of conspiracy to commit murder, hindering prosecution and evidence tampering.
Troconis, who is detained in a state prison, maintains her innocence and plans to appeal.
Jennifer Dulos has not been seen since she dropped her five children off at school, on May 24, 2019.
About 80 people packed the courtroom, with Jennifer Dulos’ family and friends on one side and Troconis’ supporters on the other. All five of Dulos’ children, as well as her mother, Gloria Farber, attended. They spoke of their heartbreak and anger.
Farber said she knew “something terrible had happened” when her daughter did not return calls or texts. She said her daughter “only wanted to give and get love and be a loving mother” to her children, who are now teenagers.
The oldest, 18-year-old Petros Dulos, said his mother’s death left him with “a hole inside of me that I know I will never fill.”
He said he had been close to his mother but struggled during his parents’ divorce.
“The defendant’s actions mean that I will never be able to tell my mom how sorry I am for not being a better son when she needed me,” he said.
Lauren Almeida, the Dulos family’s nanny, said she and Dulos’ friends had been afraid for the safety of themselves and the children after her disappearance.
Almeida asked Troconis: “Where is she, Michelle?”
Her disappearance was the subject of documentaries and a made-for-TV movie, Lifetime’s “Gone Mom.”
Jennifer Dulos belonged to a wealthy New York City family. Her father, the late Hilliard Farber, founded the brokerage Hilliard Farber & Co. after running Chase Manhattan Bank’s bond trading desk. She also was a niece by marriage of fashion designer Liz Claiborne.
“For us, five years is not a milestone but a marker of cumulative loss and longing. Life goes on, yet grief goes on alongside it, a shadow, a current, the presence of absence,” her relatives and friends said in a statement released last week.
Troconis, a dual American and Venezuelan citizen, said she co-founded a horse-riding therapy program, had owned a TV production company in Argentina, and hosted a snow-sports show for ESPN South America. Fotis Dulos was a luxury home builder from Greece.
Troconis’ family and friends described her Friday as an upright and caring person.
Her pastor, the Rev. Christopher Solimene of Avon Congregational Church, said Troconis attended Bible study and cooked for the church soup kitchen. “Her heart is big for all of God’s created, especially for children and those afflicted with disability,” Solimene said.
Troconis’ mother, Marisela Arreaza, said her daughter was a loving mother to her teenage daughter and was not the homewrecker portrayed by Dulos’ friends.
“When Michelle met Fotis Dulos, he presented himself as a family-oriented man going through an amicable divorce,” Arreaza said. “Michelle believed Fotis and had no reason to doubt him. However, we were all deceived by Fotis.”
Authorities suggested Dulos killed his wife because of his growing frustration with their divorce and child custody proceedings.
Jennifer Dulos had been living with the children in New Canaan while Fotis Dulos stayed in the family’s 10,000-square-feet (929-square-meter) home about 70 miles (115 kilometers) away in Farmington.
Hours after Jennifer Dulos was last seen alive, Troconis was recorded on surveillance video accompanying Fotis Dulos on a trip to Hartford, where he discarded trash bags from the back of his pickup truck. Police later found some of the bags after seizing Fotis Dulos’ cellphone, looking at its location data and obtaining the surveillance video from the locations.
In one of the most jarring moments in Troconis’ trial, the prosecution and state forensic experts showed a shirt, bra and zip ties with blood-like stains on them that were found in one of the trash bags. DNA testing linked the items to Jennifer Dulos.
Troconis told police she didn’t know what was in the bags or why Fotis Dulos dumped them.
Prosecutors also said Fotis Dulos left his cellphone at home on the day Jennifer Dulos vanished and Troconis answered a call to it from his friend that morning. They say that was evidence that Troconis was in on the plot and tried to help him create a bogus alibi. She denied the allegation.
Another defendant in the case, Kent Mawhinney, a friend of Fotis Dulos and his one-time lawyer in a civil case, is awaiting trial on a murder conspiracy charge. He has pleaded not guilty.
Although Jennifer Dulos’ body has never been found, a probate judge declared her legally dead last year. The Dulos children are in Farber’s custody in New York City.
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Associated Press reporter Karen Matthews contributed from New York City.
Source Agencies
